


Arma Bibliotheca

by Tennyo



Series: In Dreams [7]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Ancient History, Before episode 9x22, Clever Sam, Dreamwalking, Gen, Library of Alexandria, M/M, Semi-Canon Compliant, The beginning of episode 9x22
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-17
Updated: 2014-08-17
Packaged: 2018-02-13 12:47:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,398
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2151288
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tennyo/pseuds/Tennyo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Back in the bunker after Dean kills Abbadon, Sam finds a way to get around the spells that hold Gabriel prisoner.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Arma Bibliotheca

**Author's Note:**

> In case you don't want to read Dean/Cas, you can skip a couple of stories, but should read these first:  
> [All This Fuckery](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1539911)  
> [The Candyman Can](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1574855)  
> [Sex and Candy](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1728035)  
> [Semper Fidelis](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1851715) This one has mild Dean/Cas, but is story-centric to the plot.

Exhausted, Sam and Dean stumble down the stairs into the bunker. They throw their bags onto the war-room table, and collapse into chairs. Sam rubs his face, palms digging into his eyes as he leans back and feels his back pop. He has to admit, it’s nice having a place to come back to, but he hates the ride back, when they used to normally just find a hotel to crash in. Hearing the zip of a duffel being pulled open, he straightens and opens his eyes. Dean’s pulling out weapons, lining them up along the table for cleaning.

“Dean.”

His brother looks up at him, not nearly as exhausted-looking as he should.

“We’ve been driving back and forth all over the place for days, and you’ve barely slept. You’re gonna clean the weapons _now_?”

Dean just shrugs, pulling out his gun-cleaning kit. “Always be prepared, Sammy. Never know when we’re gonna need them.”

Sam pulls his own bag closer, not wanting to contribute to Dean’s sudden OCD trip. He’s got to admit, seeing Dean stab Abbadon, holding her up in the air that way, then kneeling over the corpse, stabbing it repeatedly, scared the crap out of him. The Blade is doing something to his brother, something dangerous. Not to mention he’s lying again. Dean just seems… harder, edgier lately. And now, after killing Abbadon, he seems somehow both calmer but more intense all at the same time. The fact that Dean won’t even consider locking the blade away leaves Sam nervous, and maybe a little afraid.

“You know,” Sam pulls his bag into his lap, “I’m gonna go crash.”

“You want your stuff cleaned too?” Dean points at the bag.

“No, no. I’ll get it in the morning, after getting some sleep. Which you should consider, too.”

Dean inclines his head, but doesn’t say anything and goes back to dismantling his 1911. Sam manages to drag himself down the hall and onto his bed, tossing his bag next to it. He takes the time to pull off his boots before flopping his head down on his pillow. After a second's thought, he slides over and digs his own gun out of his duffel, sliding it under his pillow before crashing out completely.

 

* * *

 

He’s lying on something soft, head propped up, and his hair is being stroked. A warm breeze blows, bringing with it the smell of earth, and grass, and growing things. He can feel sunlight warming his skin, but a shadow over his face. When he opens his eyes, he finds his head is in Gabriel’s lap, the angel’s fingers combing through his hair. Above them is a tree, its full green leaves providing shade.

Gabriel looks down at him and sighs sadly. “Hey, kiddo. Seems like you’ve had a rough couple of days.”

Sam nods, closing his eyes and continuing to enjoy Gabriel's fingers in his hair. He can feel the occasional pause of the stroking, hear an intake of breath as if to say something, and then a clearing of the throat as if he’s changed his mind. Sam just keeps his eyes closed, because he doesn’t know what to say either. After a few moments, he hears a grunt, and feels a shift, then Gabriel places a quick, dry kiss on his forehead. With raised eyebrows, Sam opens his eyes and looks up at the angel wearing a serious face.

“I’m sorry I can’t do more,” says Gabriel.

Sam reaches up and places his palm on Gabriel’s cheek, and the angel closes his eyes at the touch. That’s when a small idea pops up in the back of his brain. He ruminates it, rolls it around, and the idea grows, takes on new angles. Yes, this… might work… Pulling his hand from Gabe’s face, he spins around to sit on his knees, looking at him straight on.

“Gabe!” He breathes excitedly.

Gabriel sits there with a confused look, “Sam!” He retorts.

“I think you _can_ do something. Since this is a dream, we can kind of create whatever we want, right?”

Gabriel’s shoulders fall a bit. “We’ve already tried that…“

“No, no, no…” Sam waves a hand dismissively, “Just listen.” Gabe rests on his haunches, arms crossed.

“So… What’s the biggest library ever?”

Gabriel raises an eyebrow, “Hmmm, I’d say it’s a tie between the British Library and the Library of Congress…”

Rolling his eyes, Sam says, “No, a library of ancient, perhaps supernatural texts.”

This causes both of Gabe’s eyebrows to shoot up. “Well, if we’re talking current, it’s probably the one nobody knows about under the Vatican.” Sam opens his mouth, and the angel raises a finger, “But, Ashurbanipal had quite a unique collection, and most of the good stuff got copied to the one in Alexandria…”

Poking the ground with a forefinger for emphasis while he speaks, Sam lays out his idea. “That library burned, and there’s no way to know what was there, unless perhaps someone happened to have lived long enough to actually remember going there…”

Gabriel’s eyes widen a the implication.

“And,” Sam continues, “if no one knows what was in the library, then almost _anything_ could have been contained there, right?”

A grin lights up Gabriel’s features.

“Like, for instance, information about angel binding sigils?” Sam raises his eyebrows hopefully.

“Oh my brilliant, _brilliant_ man-mountain,” Gabriel grabs Sam’s shoulders and gives him a big, wet kiss on the mouth. “This just might work!”

Leaping to his feet, the angel bounces on his toes, waiting for Sam to stand up. “C’mon, c’mon, you never know when the wardens are gonna show up!”

When Sam’s finally standing, Gabriel reaches his hands out, palm-up. “I need you to hold on and close your eyes, ‘cause this is gonna take a lot of juice, and I need to make sure we don’t get separated.” Nodding, Sam grasps his hands and closes his eyes, waiting patiently. With a deep breath, the angel sighs, “Here goes nothing.”

Feeling a change in the environment around him, Sam opens his eyes to a sumptuous courtyard, with a large, shallow gazing pool at its center. Flanked on either side by columned structures, the front entrance of the tall, two-story building that housed as much of the ancient world’s knowledge as possible, towers before them. Sam can’t help but try to take in everything at once, eyes flicking to and fro.

“Is this accurate?” He asks, awed, barely glancing at the puffed-up angel by his side.

“Straight from memory. I got to visit here a couple of times before, you know, the whole place went up in smoke.”

Sam realizes he’s in a scholar-style robe that would fit in with the time period. After a quick glance at Gabe to see him wearing something similar, he walks through the courtyard, taking in the small, maze-like bushes off to the side, watches the water ripple in the large pool. He notes Gabriel hasn’t populated the area, and he wonders just how much of a strain it is on the angel to generate such a structure in his current state. Turning around, he notices the circles under the angel’s eyes, the slant of his shoulders.

“Gabe! Are you sure you should be doing this?”

The angel just shrugs, hands in his pockets. “It’s worth it for the chance to see if there’s a way out of my binding. C’mon, let’s go inside before I wear down too much.”

They climb the steps, walking into the cool interior of the main building, the smell of dusty parchment and papyrus filling the air. Along every wall are diamond-shaped racks, holding roll after roll of ancient scrolls, stacked all the way to the ceiling. Sam’s fingers are itching to see what’s inside. Then, he realizes one tiny flaw to his idea.

“Um, Gabe?” He turns to see the angel with a pewter plate of turkish delight, stuffing his face.

“Wha’?” he mumbles around a mouthful.

Sam rolls his eyes and waves a hand at a wall of scrolls. “How am I going to be able to read these?”

Swallowing, Gabe grins. “Oh, ye of little faith. Pick a scroll, any scroll. Open it up and take a peek!”

Carefully, Sam pulls a roll of delicate parchment bound with a leather thong, a tag tied to it shows the scroll holds astrological charts written by Aristarchus. Placing it on the table, he slowly unrolls the document to find one of the earliest drawings of the solar system, with the sun at the center, Earth orbiting it, and a few other eerily accurate planetary placements. All the lettering, while written with an ancient flourish, is perfectly readable English. Blinking, he turns back to the angel who is now smirking, a bowl of some kind of confection rolled in sesame seeds in his hands.

“Cool, huh?” Gabe grins around a mouthful of what must be crushed date, dark goo sticking to his teeth. “Just think of me like a Babelfish, translating straight into your brain.”

Sam raises his eyebrows, makes a face as Gabe pops in another sticky treat rolled in sesame, and looks up toward the ceiling.

“So where do we even start? How are we gonna find what we’re looking for?”

With a grunt and a swallow of his mouthful of confection, Gabe waves his hand around vaguely.

“It's all separated by category. This, obviously, is astronomy.”

He looks around, then heads toward the other end of the building. He points out sections as he walks.

“Engineering, here’s medical sciences, geology…”

He stops at one section, brow furrowed in concentration.

“Mathematics. This is…” He opens and closes his mouth a few times before giving a sigh of frustration. “Not what we’re looking for right now.”

But he gives Sam a significant look, so the man looks at the section as they pass it by.

“Ahh, here we are, philosophy and religion.”

Gabe makes a Vanna White-style gesture at the stack of scrolls.

“C’mon, grab one at random.”

Sam gives him a skeptical expression, but reaches for one in a middle section, carefully easing a brittle papyrus scroll from the stack. He checks the tag, and is surprised to see it labeled as Angelic Symbology. He looks at Gabe incredulously. It can’t be that easy.

“What? It’s a dream, remember Sammy? Your subconscious is filling in the blanks here.”

He slowly unrolls the scroll to reveal a series of symbols and sigils similar to what he’s seen used as protection against angels. Tiny handwriting identifies different symbols and what they’re used for. The subtitle of one in particular draws his attention: Power-Transfer and Binding.

“Shit.” His eyes get wide and his heart rate picks up. “Is this it, Gabe?”

The angel looks, and it takes him a while to find an answer he can actually vocalize, but he’s smiling.

“One of.”

Sam releases a huff of laughter, and wraps his arms around Gabriel, picking him up off the floor and spinning in place.

“Whoa, Sammy, I didn’t sign on for the Tilt-a-Whirl.”

He gets dropped to the floor and Sam’s hands hold his face as he kisses him. This is it, what they’ve been looking for. Relief sweeps over Sam, and he kisses Gabe deeper.

“Mmmphhh,” is all Gabe can manage as Sam leans him over the table, his tongue insistently exploring the angel’s mouth. Gabriel’s hands wrestle with the folds of Sam’s robe, but he gets his warm hands on the man’s back, kneading the muscles there as Sam continues to kiss him senseless, elated that the plan worked.

Gabriel is picked up and seated on the edge of the table, Sam’s hands brushing his thighs under his robe when he pulls away from the man’s insistent mouth with a jerk.

“Christ on a cracker.”

It takes a second for Sam’s eyes to focus, and he’s a little ashamed how easily they got distracted. Gabe’s face looks tense, and before Sam can react, the angel is speaking.

“I’m sorry, Samwise.”

 

* * *

 

The next thing Sam knows, he’s awakened by some kind of blaring racket. He automatically reaches for his gun and points it in the direction of the offending noise. He realizes it’s Dean, with a cell phone.

“Nice reflexes. Better hair.” Dean reacts calmly as if there isn’t a gun pointed in his face.

Groggily, Sam looks at his watch and wonders what the hell’s wrong with him. He says as much. His brain finally catches up when he realizes he’s only slept for two hours. Hasn’t Dean slept at all? While he voices his concerns, Dean grabs Sam’s boots, then throws them at him.

“Not tired. And we got work to do, so put on your dancing shoes and let’s boogie.”

Dean casually walks out like this is an everyday occurrence. Has he really not slept at all? The concept of Dean not needing rest frightens him a little, and he lays down the gun, running his hands over his face before he struggles to get his act together.

Later, with a clean shirt on and a cup of coffee in his hand, he tries to figure out what’s up.

Dean says he called Cas. Wait, _he_ called Cas?

As Sam tries to keep up, asking important questions about what and why, the answers to which Cas never supplied, Dean goes on a mini-rant about how the angel is a “weird, dorky little guy” before justifying the god-awful early departure as a way to use the angels to find Metatron.

He can’t help but notice Dean wrapping up the First Blade, as if it had been recently handled. They get into an argument about how wise it might not be to bring it along, but Dean is adamant that they keep the kill-anything weapon handy. Sam’s problem isn’t what the blade can or can’t kill, it’s how it’s affecting his brother, and he’s insistent they leave it behind. When Dean finally agrees, it’s with relatively little fuss, and Sam’s sleep-deprived brain is relieved to not have to process language for a while after that.

Sam decides that until they figure out what’s going on with Cas, he’ll just keep the information he just found out with Gabe to himself. Dean may have agreed to leave the Blade behind, but something is still very wrong. He manages to get a few more hours rest as they make their way to Missouri.

**Author's Note:**

> Sorry for the long time in between updates.  
> DCBB submissions were due yesterday, so I should have more time for this story and hopefully can wrap it up before Season 10 starts.  
> Because it definitely isn't going to be canon-compliant after the end of Season 9!


End file.
